Middle class losing ground as rich get richer

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Oct 4 2006, 08:11 PM) [snapback]328186[/snapback]</div>

wow, you've had an even rougher past than mine. i'm glad you were also able to get up on your feet.

i'm not saying it's unequivocally related but it sure as hell makes your chances a lot better. i am in grad school, competing with kids who have had the best of everything since day one because they come from incredibly well off families. i had to fight tooth and nail to survive to the age of 18, then managed to get through college and do well enough to make myself a desirable candidate for this program. i made something happen to put myself in the same place as all these other kids whose biggest problem was deciding which car they wanted mom and dad to buy them for their 18th birthday. call me jaded but it really says something to me that 90% of the people in my program come from fairly wealthy backgrounds.

that said i get a real kick out of how i scare most of them. :lol:

 

Well, I thought I knew what the term "middle class" meant ... neither rich, nor poor. But looking at the various definitions, I see that people have all sorts of definitions. So that makes it hard to really guage if the average worker is better off today than he was 10 years ago.

I think a good definition is the classic one, to divide up the households into fifths, and then take the 3/5 in the middle as the general middle class. Those are households with annual incomes from about 18,500 to 99,999. Anyone here who has a combined household income of over $100,000 is rich, by this definition (it really means you are in the top quintile of income in the country). I'll bet we have a lot of Prius-drivin', gated community livin' people here who didn't know they were in the top 5% of the country!

There are some interesting stats at http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/re...lth/002484.html ... you can twist stats any way you like, but at least these are presented in nearly raw form. It does say that median earnings for the average American worker remained flat for the two year period (2003 - 2004), but that the poverty rate increased to 9.6% of Americans ... a jump of 2.4%, but still less than the average of the rate during the 1980's and 1990's. That's an interesting stat ... during the 1980's and 1990's, averaging over the boom and bust of those two decades, the poverty rate was actually higher.

Blacks, Asians and non-hispanic whites median income did not change between 2003 - 2004. American Indians saw their median income rise 4%. Hispanics (of all races) had 2.5% less median income than in 2003. I think you would have to look at the growth rates in those groups, as shrinking populations could trend higher and growing populations could move the median downward.

The question is, what can be done to move the 36 million people in poverty into the middle class?



<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Oct 4 2006, 05:11 PM) [snapback]328186[/snapback]</div>

Wow! That's an inspiring story! I hope that's one you can share with others later somehow, either in a mentoring relationship or via some kind of media like magazine articles. You not only have the right worldview to make it in our culture, you also have a way of communicating that as well.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Oct 4 2006, 11:30 PM) [snapback]328325[/snapback]</div>

I think you meant to say top 20%, not 5%.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Oct 4 2006, 05:11 PM) [snapback]328186[/snapback]</div>

What you have accomplished is admirable, and you have much to be proud of.

But every educated child makes us a safer and richer and stronger country. It is just plain stupid to have a system where education is available to poor people only when they have your extraordinary level of drive, stamina, and intelligence.

Also, I imagine you spent your first 16 years with parents who instilled in you the importance of education, and a belief that if you studied and worked hard you could succeed. Many kids grow up in families and neighborhoods where there is little hope and little incentive to learn, and where they see all around them examples of educated people in dead-end jobs because of racial discrimination.

Do we really want a system where only the most extraordinary individuals can rise up the economic ladder, and everyone else, if not born into the upper or middle class, is tossed into the garbage heap?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Oct 4 2006, 09:33 PM) [snapback]328329[/snapback]</div>

Yep, meant the top quintile or top 20%! Thanks.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Oct 4 2006, 11:01 AM) [snapback]327846[/snapback]</div>

This thread raises an interesting and important subject. Many of the posts bemoan the uneven distribution of wealth. But how many of those who complain will vote for a left-wing government which supports higher taxation? High taxes are part of an effort to redistribute wealth but how many will vote for the candidate who proposes an increase in tax? How many of you are members of a left-wing political party?

The man who brags about his cleverness at lifting himself from poverty reminds me of the fox who says to the chicken he is ripping to pieces, "You silly bird, you should have been like me and looked after yourself, not sit around in that chicken pen." The fox forgets that he was born like he is and it was no fault of the chicken that she had been born in captivity, her power of flight bred out of her.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxo @ Oct 5 2006, 12:52 PM) [snapback]328522[/snapback]</div>

I will/am. Even though I'm one of those top quintile types who are most likely to be taxed higher under the Dems.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Oct 5 2006, 01:32 PM) [snapback]328541[/snapback]</div>

No they don't. The useless Iraq war was paid for on borrowed money.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxo @ Oct 5 2006, 10:52 AM) [snapback]328522[/snapback]</div>

Taxes are not an effort to redistribute wealth. Taxes are levied to pay for the services we demand from our government. Progressive taxes are based on the idea that the wealthy have benefitted more from the economy than have the poor, and therefore can and should pay a higher proportion of their income. Some tax money does indeed go to the poor in the form of various social welfare programs. Even more tax money goes to the rich in the form of pork barrel contracts, bail-outs for failing businesses, and a variety of services that are only useful to the rich.

I will vote for a left-wing party (the Green Party) and it will lose. So I will not be responsible for any programs the eventual winners will create. I'll be voting for a party that will lose because both of the parties that have a chance of winning make me sick to my stomach. And maybe, if enough people bail out from the Ds and the Rs to support the Greens, in 20 or 30 years the Greens could become a viable party and actually bring some honesty and common sense into government, something the two big parties have demonstrated over and over that they are unwilling to do.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 5 2006, 03:41 PM) [snapback]328623[/snapback]</div>

I'm not going to risk 20 or 30 more years of this. I'm voting D.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Oct 5 2006, 06:38 PM) [snapback]328755[/snapback]</div>

And guarantee that your great-grandchildren will have nobody to vote for but the same old two corrupt parties with their wars and their kow-towing to the transnational corporations.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 5 2006, 04:41 PM) [snapback]328623[/snapback]</div>

Ah, but you're assuming that, if the Greens become a viable party, that members be sidling up to the same trough as the Dems & Reps. I think it's really hard for someone who enters politics with the best motives to remain uncorrupted by the system. I don't have any confidence that an entire party could do it.

I do agree that we need more viable parties than the big two. I just don't believe that, in the end, they won't be just as bad.

 

Democracy would function <strike>better</strike> if people voted according to their conscience, and if everyone voted. Every vote counts, no matter who 'wins'.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 6 2006, 09:49 AM) [snapback]328896[/snapback]</div>

There are exceptions, but I usually side with the Dems on issues of war and corporations.

I don't think corruption lies so much with the parties as the people in the parties, and I don't think the Green party will ever become viable. If it did, what makes you think it wouldn't become corrupt as well? Power breeds corruption, as they say.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hyo silver @ Oct 6 2006, 11:21 AM) [snapback]328918[/snapback]</div>

I agree completely. There's too many people who complain about the system and the people running it, but won't vote because "There's no one to vote for". If you don't make an attempt to vote out/against the people you think are clowns, then the clowns are going to be the only ones ever elected.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Oct 4 2006, 11:01 AM) [snapback]327846[/snapback]</div>

Wait. Are you trying to tell me that trickle-down economics doesn't work?